Right Wing Nut House

We live in an age when the confluence of the political culture and the culture of celebrity have merged to form a seamless, media driven whole, a world where rock stars and movie legends are asked to comment on a wide variety scientific and technical issues whose complexity and in some cases obscurity, would tax the combined faculties of many institutions of higher learning.

There are some, including author Theodore H. White who traces this marriage of cultures to John F. Kennedy’s fascination with Hollywood and in particular, his study of the question of why the notoriety of people like Clark Gable and Marlyn Monroe transcended the small artists community of Hollywood and made them larger than life characters to the American people. Kennedy was the first Presidential candidate to use Hollywood stars in a huge way. All of a sudden, reporters were asking Sammy Davis Junior his views on race relations (questions that Davis generally refused to answer). Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Kennedy’s brother in law Peter Lawford not only campaigned for the President, they were included in the Presidential circle of friends and thus identified closely with Kennedy’s personality and policies.

It was the Viet Nam War that galvanized Hollywood and made movie stars into activists. With the breakdown of the studio system where stars were virtual prisoners of movie moguls and thus subject to strict limitations on their public persona, movie stars were suddenly free to comment on and participate in anything they wished. While certainly a liberating experience, the war spawned a generation of Hollywood stars whose extreme liberal politics led them to ever more outrageous public commentary on things they knew very little about. Do the thoughts of these celebrities have real world consequences? Ask the apple growers of America.

In 1989. a little known preservative used by about 5% of apple growers called Alar became a focus of concern because of it’s possible cancer causing ingredients. CBS 60 Minutes produced a scary story about what it termed “the most potent carcinogen used in our food supply.” Less than a week later, Congress held hearings on Alar that featured several experts from the National Resources Defense Council, the EPA, and the National Academy of Science. The hearing also featured actress Meryl Streep, whose dramatic testimony was seen on all three network newscasts that evening.

It was a perfect storm of high profile celebrity marrying up with the politics of the environmental movement. And it caused a panic that cost the apple growers of America $375 million in losses.

The only problem with this story is that it was a fairy tale:

Mass hysteria ensued. At a parent’s request, state troopers chased a school bus to confiscate a student’s apple. School administrators had apples and apple products summarily destroyed. Apple markets rotted overnight.

The NRDC, however, prospered. Fenton, its media consultant, stated in an interview for Propaganda Review: “The [PR] campaign was designed so that revenue would flow back to NRDC from the public. The group sold a book about pesticides through a 900 number on the ‘Donahue’ show and to date 90,000 copies have been sold.” Fenton’s strategy succeeded to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars.

At the same conference, environmental-health expert A. Alan Moghissi, Ph.D., then of the University of Maryland, stated: “The Alar controversy is a classic case of poor science applied to a societal decision, resulting in a poor final decision.”

Also at the conference, Dr. Richard Adamson, then director of the NCI’s Division of Cancer Etiology, stated: “The risk of eating an apple treated with Alar is less than the risk of eating a peanut butter sandwich or a well-done hamburger.” More recently, Adamson described the cancer risk from eating Alar-treated apples as “nonexistent.”

Even though both the EPA and the NAS testified at the hearing that the risk of eating Alar treated apples was extraordinarily low, it was Meryl Streep’s ignorant rant against apple growers deliberately trying to give children cancer that people heard.

And now Bob Geldof - rock star, concert promoter, organizer of famine relief for Africa, and all around celebrity saint - has decided to enter the world of international finance. The incongruity of someone who became famous through his participation in a punk rock band called “Boomtown Rats” who now wants to lecture the developed world on such arcane subjects as aid packages and third world debt relief seems to be lost on the media who are trumpeting Geldof’s latest brainstorm to the skies. Called “Live8″ because a series of concerts and protest march will coincide with a meeting of the G-8 in Britain this July, Geldof is following in the footsteps of that other globetrotting celebrity, U-2’s Bono whose expertise includes lecturing the developed world about famine, the AIDS pandemic, and other African issues that some have called little more than ignorant posturing.

According to its website, the goal of Live8 is as follows:

This is without doubt a moment in history where ordinary people can grasp the chance to achieve something truly monumental and demand from the 8 world leaders at G8 an end to poverty.

The G8 leaders have it within their power to alter history. They will only have the will to do so if tens of thousands of people show them that enough is enough.

By doubling aid, fully canceling debt, and delivering trade justice for Africa, the G8 could change the future for millions of men, women and children.”

Canceling some or all of Africa’s huge debt has been on the table of the G-8 for several years. It’s estimated that sub-Saharan Africa alone has $55 billion in debt that it can never repay. It would make sense to cancel at least some of Africa’s crushing debt burden and free up government funds for other development projects.

The problem with Africa, however, isn’t money. And doubling aid to the continent would be something akin to giving a convicted drunk driver his license back with a gift-wrapped bottle of Chivas Regal. Why does Geldof think that Africa has debt problems in the first place? Loans made by western banks and governments to the kleptocratic autocracies that pass for governments on that benighted continent have been swallowed up by both bad people and bad government:

Bitter experience suggests that even if these huge sums were multiplied tenfold, they would do little good. For Africa received £220 billion of aid between 1960 and 1997, the equivalent of six Marshall Plans, and finished up even poorer than before.

With the possible exception of President Robert Mugabe, everyone now accepts that Africa’s central problem is not a shortage of aid but “bad governance”. Put simply, the continent is filled with repressive and incompetent regimes whose chief pastime is grand larceny.

Decades of bitter experience have shown that authoritarianism is the enemy of development. But a British-sponsored commission has dodged an unambiguous demand for every African regime to embrace democracy. It is little short of incredible that this vital issue can still be skirted.

Still more depressing is the report’s coverage of corruption. This, we are told, is a “systemic challenge facing African leaders”. In a continent where Gen Sani Abacha, the late Nigerian dictator, was able to steal between £1 billion and £3 billion in less five years, this is no exaggeration.

Despite facts to the contrary, Geldof has decided that the western world must not only reform it’s aid programs but also “eliminate extreme poverty” whatever that means. And he’s holding western government responsible for this state of affairs due to “trade injustices.”

Breaking down trade barriers is always desirable. But what happens if the trade “injustices” are occurring on both sides of the trade divide? When African nations severely restrict food and electronics imports in favor of bolstering their domestic industries, why should western nations cut off their own noses to spite their faces and give Africans a break on their exports? According to Geldof, there apparently is no reason except “justice” whatever that is.

Geldof’s ignorance is not confined to issues. He also has the political instincts of a marmoset:

Anarchists from around the world are planning to cause chaos at next month’s G8 summit in Gleneagles as a row broke out last night between Bob Geldof and DJ Andy Kershaw over the absence of black musicians at events staged to benefit Africans.

With police fears mounting over Geldof’s call for one million people to protest at the summit, Kershaw last night condemned the almost exclusively white line-up for the pop concerts to coincide with the summit. “If we are going to change the West’s perception of Africa, events like this are the perfect opportunity to do something for Africa’s self-esteem,” he said. “But the choice of artists for the Live8 concerts will simply reinforce the global perception of Africa’s inferiority.”

But The Independent on Sunday can reveal that anarchist groups that have rioted at previous G8 gatherings are planning similar disruptions in Scotland and plan to hijack Geldof’s “long march to freedom” on 6 July and the Make Poverty History rally on 2 July. Anarchist groups will encourage protesters to “Make Capitalism History” instead.

So, for a concert to help call attention to African problems Geldof fails to book African acts? And to top it off, the moonbats are ready to hijack his “Long Walk for Justice” and turn it into a free-for-all. It appears that what Mr. Geldof is good at besides his many accomplishments as a musician is shallow thinking.

Chrenkoff, as usual, gets it exactly right:

It’s so much easier though to have a concert or an appeal for aid or debt forgiveness rather than for political and economic liberty. It’s difficult to imagine Robbie Williams and U2 playing for regime change in country X, or Madonna and Sting performing on stage for economic reform in country Y and international trade liberalization. But these are the things that actually matter. And so our boys from the 42nd Infantry Division are now doing more for the cause of solving world’s problems, than our boys from REM strutting the stage.

To believe that we can wipe out poverty simply by dumping a couple of hundred billion dollars into the hands of ruthless tyrants is worse than absurd; it’s morally dishonest. Proposing bad solutions is worse than not proposing any solutions at all. What Mr. Geldof is doing is using his celebrity to promote policies that not only are wrong, they’d be unattainable even if they were right.

In short, Geldof is fooling himself. And in the process, he’s fostering the notion among the uncritical young that world problems can be solved by singing and dancing and marching.

Would that t’were true. But like the Pied Piper, Geldof is leading the children astray. And what makes it unconscionable is that he’s achieving more notoriety in the process.

Cross Posted at Blogger News Network